


teeth in the grass

by cymanda



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cymanda/pseuds/cymanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaneki shows up to Hide's door one night unannounced and he's not sure how to react.</p>
            </blockquote>





	teeth in the grass

**Author's Note:**

> i found this is my fanfiction files and it wasn't half bad so here you go. it's still pretty disjointed but. yeah. it's not the worst thing ive done so woooo!
> 
> it's in first person. sorry.

When someone knocked on my apartment door, I muted the TV and listened for it again. The same someone knocked again; it was the same seven-beats, and I froze. The same seven beats knocked against the door a third time, and before it was over, I was standing up, composing myself, answering the door, because there was no one that knocked a door that elaborately other than -

“Kaneki,” I breathed out, right as I opened it.

“Hi,” the other, who had to be Kaneki, responded. He had white hair, and…and a weird skin-tight suit on, along with a mask around his neck, but it had to be him. The voice gave him away, but that wasn’t it – that stupid look in his eyes was there, too. The one he got specifically when he did something dumb and needed help fixing it.

And If Kaneki needed me after these six months, then something was horribly wrong. Right?

“Are you okay?” I asked. I asked it in this casual tone of voice, half for my own sanity, and half for Kaneki’s. (Or what was left of it, anyway.)

“Can I come inside?” Kaneki asked, exasperated. I moved to the side without a word and Kaneki took a step forward. He was limping. Why was he limping, was he okay? Did he just get into a fight – oh god, was he dying? Did he come here because he was dying and didn’t want to die alo –

“Hide, calm down.” He said it with this light laugh, that was just familiar enough to wrench my stomach but just different, just tired enough to make me sick, and it was weird, really, because I said none of that out loud, I was sure of it, and normally, I was the mind reader out of the two of us. What happened to him? What on earth happened to him?

I stared at him. He stared back. I expected him to flush at some point – he always did that, when I stared at him for too long, he’d flush up and ask me what was wrong – but he didn’t. He just kept staring.

I sighed and sat down on the couch, patting the spot next to me.

“Sit down.”

“No, I really don’t need to, it’ll be fine, it’s probably just a torn muscle or something –“

“Kaneki, I’m not asking you to sit down because of your goddamn leg, I’m asking you to sit down because you’re not standing up again until I know exactly what’s going on.”

He froze. I stared at him again. He flushed and sat down.

So he’s hiding under a shell now, too.

He sat as far away from me as possible, which, you know, I took a bit of offense to, since I hadn’t seen this huge sack of shit for about six months, and frankly, I expected a much more poetic reunion. Maybe something involving me saving his life. That’d be cool.

He was staring at me. I stared back – but I smiled this time. He got choked up.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “Hide, I’m really, really sorry that I disappeared. I didn’t think I would be able to…to be friends with you anymore because if I went berserk or something I could – “ he paused, mouth trying to form words, and failing “ – and I couldn’t do that to you, I couldn’t do that to you at all, Hide, you’re too important, and –“

“It hurt.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” He was looking down, and I’m pretty sure that even if I tilted his head up he wouldn’t look at me – he’d just keep his eyes fixated on that finger he had just broken one, two, three times, now.

I took a deep breath.

“Kaneki,” I started slowly, “you’re my best friend. You know I’ll never leave your side, right?” He looked up at me and opened his mouth to protest, but I kept talking. “But, In order to stay by you –“ and I smiled, now, “I need to fucking know where you are, Kaneki. Seriously, keep me updated on this stuff.”

He looked at me breathlessly – seriously, I was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing in that moment – and then he laughed, and oh my god, if his laugh wasn’t music to my ears.

I scooted closer to him while he was hunched over and laughing and put a hand over his – and he looked at our hands curiously, then at me. And it was a really nice moment, but…

“Kaneki, I’m sorry, but I lied to you, I’m not keeping on this couch until you explain,” I said, smiling and using my other hand to cover my nose, “because right now you smell like blood and I’m honestly not sure what else, and I don’t think I can cuddle with that kind of stench.” He flushed and nodded, moving away and standing up. “You know where the bathroom is, right?”

“First door on the right?” he asked, and I nodded. And he ran off.

I called after him. “I’m gonna be in the bedroom. Meet me in there when you’re done!”

And about thirty minutes later, he walked into my our the bedroom in a lazy pair of sweats I let him borrow, which, frankly, looked adorable on him, and with the fluffiest hair I’d ever seen.

“Your hair looks like a cloud."

He laughed, and ran a hand through it himself. “I was wondering when you’d comment on it.”

“Seemed pretty minor in comparison to a lot of other things, but oh my god, now that it’s all clean it’s so pretty.” He sat down next to me, and I scooted closer again, and, before I could even ask, he nodded. I tentatively ran a hand through it and he sighed, leaning into the touch. I smiled, pulling him closer to me, and he smelled like coffee and old books and soon, I was sighing too.

He laughed first. “We’re two idiots.”

“You’re not wrong,” I said quickly in response. A hand of his fell into my hair.

“Yours changed too.”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Stopped caring about it enough to get it cut regularly. I had priorities.” Kaneki nodded and we sat there for a while, hands in each other’s hair, two idiots obviously in love and refusing to just name it already.  
We fell asleep like that, too. It was lovely. Nicest dreams I’d had in a while, not a single nightmare, not a single bad thing. Just fluffy clouds and Kaneki.

I woke up at about 4 am, though. Which was unusual. It wasn't a nightmare, it was this strange sensation of being hopelessly unable to breathe, which, you know, worrying, but – but when I saw red tentacles holding me in place, I was a little bit more than worried. I clawed at them and they only tightened and I realized that the sensation of not being able to breathe wasn’t just a sensation, it was an actual thing, and I quickly turned to Kaneki and shook him weakly, trying to both wake him up and not scare him because these things are designed to _kill people_ –

He groaned and moved around a bit, the kagune moving around with him, and his grip tightened more. He was mumbling, and vaguely I thought it was my name over and over again which would have been a lot more flattering if he wasn’t slowly killing me.  
He was slowly killing me.

You know, this was somehow on the list of things I hadn’t expected.

I shook him harder this time, and this time, his eyes flared open – one that normal, grey color I knew so well, and the other…

Well, I had nightmares for a few months from the look I got from the other.

“Kaneki, it’s me, it’s Hide, your best friend, Kaneki, Kaneki please – “

He squinted at me, squinted at me tilted his head. I tugged at the kagune wrapped tightly around my chest, and, very, very quickly he realize what was going on.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh shit,” he hissed and loosened them, pulling them back and putting them back from…wherever those demon tentacles come from. As interesting as ghouls were, in that moment, I honestly did not give a shit about anything that wasn’t delicious oxygen.

After a few breaths, I could breathe again. I looked at Kaneki, and he must have been able to see the fear in my face because he looked like a kicked puppy.

“I’d say its okay, but it’s really not,” I started, “can you just not control them while you sleep?”

“I get…nightmares, and…when they’re really strong, they kind of…”

“I get it, you don’t have to say anymore unless you want to.” He broke his finger again. I kept talking. I’d ask about that eventually, in time. “We just don’t sleep together, it’s cool. It’s cool.” He hesitated and I sighed, pulling him closer. “What happened to you, Kaneki?”

“I don’t really know anymore,” he mumbled, nuzzling my shoulder, and he finished it with a sad, sad whisper, “I don’t really know anymore.”

“Why did you come here?” I asked, rubbing his back, “I’m not mad or upset or angry that you did, I just…want to know.”

“I had a dream.”

“I assume I was in it?”

“You were, and…there’s this group of ghouls named Aogiri Tree, and they – Hide, they – “

“They killed me.”

He shook his head. I raised an eyebrow.

“Hide, they…they made you into...Hide, they turned you into a ghoul and I had to…I had to fight you, Hide, I killed you,” he took a deep shaky breath, “so I had to come here and…make sure you were still okay.”

I held him tighter. “I’m okay, Kaneki. I’m okay. You don’t have to hurt me. We’re best friends, and we always will be. Nothing on this planet, hell, nothing in this universe can change that. You hear that?”

He nodded and buried his head in my shoulder. I could feel my shirt getting wet, but I heard nothing. That was new, too. He’d always been a loud sobber. I rubbed his back and hummed to him – he always liked that, and I had a hunch he could use the reminder of an older time right now – until his shoulders stopped shaking.

He looked up at me with two puffy red eyes and a small, nervous smile.

I kissed his forehead.

“I love you, you know.”

He smiled and kissed my nose. “I do.”

“So?”

“What?”

“You’re really going to leave me hanging here, Kaneki?”

He laughed again and kissed me.

Not like, on the forehead, which, well, we did a lot, or on the nose, which was a ‘oh no, my best friend is upset’ kind of thing, no, just a kiss. And it was…it was surprisingly nice.

He pulled away after a second. “Sorry, I forgot that you didn’t like that kind of stuff, sorry, sor-“

“No, that,” I said quickly, “that was perfect.”

He looked at me brightly and I couldn’t really resist kissing him again when he had that adorable look on his face. After we broke up from that one, we bumped our foreheads together and looked at each other, no scowls, no flushes, just smiles.  
“Kaneki?”

“Mmm?”

“Promise me you’ll come back?”

After a moment, he spoke. “I promise."

“Good, now…I’m still tired.”

“Mm…me too.”

I sat up. He looked at me oddly. “No offense, but I like sleeping peacefully without the threat of death.” I quickly added, “If I hear you screaming or thrashing or anything, I’ll wake you up, promise.” He nodded and lied back down. I ruffled his hair, grabbed my pillow, and ran off to the living room.

I nearly collapsed on the couch and laughed tiredly. “I cannot believe this is happening,” I mumbled softly, “but I am so glad it is.”


End file.
